comScore September 2010 Video Metrix - Less Viewers, More Minutes Per

Yes boys and girls, it's that time again. The comScore top ten lists for online video properties are in. The thrills! The Spills! The shake ups, shake downs and everything all around. Let's get on with the show!Hey sometimes it's hard to make all these statistic that I write up interesting. So, from time to time, I might resort to a sensationalist TV/radio announcer approach or, in this case, a Circus hawker's tactic. It worked apparently if you're reading this line. P.T. Barnum was right!

Alright, on with the number. comScore, like they always do, ranked Top ten online video properties. I was tired of trying to perfectly format the tables, so I made them images. You'd be amazed how much time that saves me. I know, I know, you're amazingly curious to see if anyone managed to knock Google off the top spot yet. The answer would be a resounding no. They're still crushing everyone, thanks to YouTube, in Total Unique viewers (82.5% overall), Viewing Sessions (only 36.2%) and Minutes per viewer (3.5 times the nearest competition).

With 144,2 million unique viewers and 260.4 minutes per viewer, that means GooTube served up 71,424.7 years of video viewing last month. A useless but fun stat.

Compared to August which saw 177.6 million viewers, September was slightly down with only 174.7. New TV premiers interfering with online video viewing? There have been a lot of new shows this season and many returned, so who knows.

Oddly, GooTube picked up about a million viewing sessions and lost 9 minutes per viewer. Insignificant in their bottom line I'm sure. However, more interesting is the comparison of the rest of the top ten.

Yahoo! topped Facebook in September (could it be due to their new Bing-powered search?) gaining a million UV while Facebook dropped about 6M and 2 minutes per viewer. VEVO took a tumble but not do to major viewing loss. They dropped a couple million UV gained 3 million sessions for the month and those sessions were longer as they tacked on about 4.3 minutes per user.

Microsoft also some boost in September with a 6M UV jump, 63M sessions lift though a 10 minuter per user drop off in viewing time.

Gone from the top ten in September is Break Media Network which means they lost at least 15 million UV for the month, replacing them was Hulu who must have jumped up a little in UV (less than 29.8M last month to 29.9 this month). Break Media was not available for comment at time of publishing (I've always wanted to say that, and I gave them like eight hours to respond).

On the video ad network side of the coin (because that's the two types on online video right? Content and advertising?) the table seemed to shape up sort of like this:

Looks much the same as that last table, I know. Anyway, still topping off the chart of shame is Hulu who show more ads than actual video ad networks do. Are they still trying to get us to pay to watch ads? Maybe they should open Hulad.com where it's all ads and those are broken up with trailers for their actual content...that might work... Could boost their expected IPO even.

Anyway, they outdid themselves this month by showing about 4 million more ads and upping their ads per viewer to 30.2. Did that negatively impact their reach? It took an almost one percent hit. That's big considering they didn't really add any viewers from last month.

Second and third flip-flopped and it's still a close race between Tremor and BrightRoll who each have 400 million plus ads shown, around 7 ads per viewer and about 21% reach (BR almost 22% this round). I should start keeping track of this every month and we'll start a pool on who wins more months out of the year and by how much. Oh wait, gambling is illegal in America right?

Hey everyone! Put your hands together for ADAP.TV who popped onto the top ten from relative comScore Video Metrix obscurity last month (as in, they weren't in the chart). Considering they're also a video ad network it's good to see they made the party, well done folks. They did so well in fact that it makes me think they weren't being tracked by comScore prior to this month as they knocked off Google and Microsoft both, completely took out Crosspoint Media and BBE. Well, maybe other newcomer to the chart this month TubeMogul, had something to do with that last one. BBE was precariously perched on the lowest rung last month with only 160.6M ads and seemingly just couldn't take the heat this time round. Side note: TubeMogul must have jumped a full 20M video ads as they didn't make the chart last month and #10 was 160.6M ads.

Google and Microsoft also did a flip flop from last month with GooTube landing on top even though both showed gains in ads. It seems Microsoft lost a bit in reach and ads per viewer while Google added. I guess that's how you do it right? Show more ads per viewer and then that means more ads overall.

SpotXchange and CBS both added piles of video ads served (27M and 14M respectively), which served to keep them in the chart this month and even on top of Break Media who lost some 30 million ad impressions to go with that 17 or so million video viewers from last month. Oddly, SpotXchange did it and lowered their ads per viewer, well done!

Christophor Rick is a freelance writer specializing in technology, new media, video games, IPTV, online video advertising and consumer electronics. His past work has included press releases, copywriting, travel writing and journalism.

Christophor Rick

As a journalist I feel obligated to report the following: I spoke with a Break Media representative. They stated that the internal metrics do not mesh with the comScore ones and that they are working together to see what's happened and will get back to me.

We've seen this in the past from comScore, usually they repair and re-release the numbers in a matter of days. These were available as of 12 October and it's now 15 October. I just popped over there and there's been no movement on the numbers from what I reported here.